Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Alex | Email Tina Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice. Senate Minority Leader MITCH MCCONNELL (R-Ky.) announced on Wednesday that every single member of his caucus would vote against raising the debt ceiling when the government hits the cap sometime this fall. Such a proclamation reeked of hypocrisy, since Senate Republicans were willing to support debt ceiling hikes during Donald Trump’s presidency and since the current ceiling needs to be raised, in part, because of spending accumulated by bills passed with Republican votes. In the aftermath of McConnell’s threat, many Democrats in Congress have been apoplectic. “There should be no negotiating with economic arsonists who are threatening to tank our economy,” Sen. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN (D-Md.), a veteran of the 2011 debt limit fight, said in a statement to West Wing Playbook. But not the White House. They’ve basically played it cool. Press secretary JEN PSAKI, in a gaggle with reporters , said the administration “expect[ed] Congress to act in a timely manner... as they did three times on a broad bipartisan basis during the last administration.” Asked again on Friday, she echoed those talking points once more. West Wing Playbook reached out to the White House press shop on Wednesday to ask for a bit more detail about how administration officials are thinking about a debt ceiling standoff. For the next day and a half, we got crickets. This morning, a White House official contacted us, but only would talk off the record. And, frankly, there was nothing notable said. For those Democrats who went through the Obama-era debt ceiling fights, the Biden team’s nonchalance may seem mystifying. Back in 2011, then-President BARACK OBAMA was pushed into debt ceiling negotiations by congressional Republicans, who demanded spending cuts commensurate with the size of the debt ceiling hike the White House was proposing. It was a mess that resulted in spending cuts, budget sequestration and the infamous "super committee" that was tasked with recommending deficit reduction measures. After that experience, Obama made it very clear. He would never negotiate around the debt ceiling again. Period. Full stop. Don’t even mention it. "In case there’s any confusion, I will not negotiate over whether or not America keeps its word and meets its obligations,” Obama said in 2013. “I will not negotiate over the full faith and credit of the United States.” As part of the Democratic Party’s insistence that they would not negotiate around the debt ceiling, Obama and then-Senate Majority Leader HARRY REID (D-Nev.) made one notable tactical shift: they kept Biden away from the negotiations, fearful that his love of the give-and-take would open the door for Republicans to take the hostage once again. The situation, of course, is different now. Republicans don’t control the House or the Senate. Biden doesn’t have to even talk to McConnell about it. Democrats can push a debt ceiling hike through a reconciliation bill that can pass without GOP votes and then let House Speaker NANCY PELOSI do her work. “Obama was faced with a Republican Congress so he was really held hostage,” said DAVID AXELROD, Obama’s longtime aide. “[Biden’s people] can say we are not going to be held hostage again, but the fact is they’re not hostage.” Indeed, senior aides on the Hill said they believed McConnell made his remarks this week not as a warning to Biden but as a signal for him to tuck a debt ceiling hike into the reconciliation package that Democrats are set to push once bipartisan infrastructure talks conclude. “Weird for a minority leader to telegraph this early he’s afraid of having a vote, eh?” said one aide. But even the prospect that the debt limit might be subject to negotiations (and, therefore, that it might not be raised) could damage the economic recovery that Biden has built his agenda around. “Even the threat of failing to [raise the debt limit] has caused detrimental impacts in the past, including the sole credit rating downgrade in the history of the nation in 2011,” Treasury Secretary JANET YELLEN wrote in a letter to Pelosi today. And considering these stakes — along with the distinct possibility that Biden won’t always have a Democratic-run Congress — it would make some sense for the White House to continue the Obama precedent that the debt ceiling is non-negotiable. And yet, in each instance that Biden’s team has been asked to address Republican threats, they have never once said that the mere idea that the country would default on its debt was so inherently absurd and self-sabotaging that it wasn’t worthy of discussion. We offered the White House the chance to do just that again today. They declined to make such a proclamation. Do you work in the Biden administration? Are you in touch with the White House? Are you KIMBERLEY KAPLAN? We want to hear from you — and we’ll keep you anonymous: westwingtips@politico.com . Or if you want to stay really anonymous send us a tip through SecureDrop, Signal, Telegram, or Whatsapp here. | 
